I want a baseball team, too!

Leave it to the Seibu Railway group to follow on a trend and try to squeeze a fortune out of it.

The core business of the Seibu railway group is hotels and resorts, along with the eponymous train line. They are most well know for the Seibu lions, one of the strongest teams in Japanese baseball.

Following the hoopla over two internet companies trying to establish a new baseball franchise, and the proposed sale of the Daiei Hawks to Softbank, Seibu Railways hotel and resort firm, Kokudo, has reportedly put the Lions up for sale. Get a load of the asking price: 20 to 25 billion yen! 200 million dollars, and you HAVE to use the crappy stadium way out of Tokyo. Good buy. Not.
Seibu being the incompetent follower that it has always been, offered the team to the internet company called "livedoor" that did not get approval to start a new franchise. Innovation in business from the Seibu group.

What is going on? If you have an internet company, you buy a sports team-arguably one of the most analog businesses in the universe?

I want one too!!!

Informed sources tell me that the former head and still shareholder of Seibu Railways, Yoshiaki Tsutumi, was the only reason the company kept the team, as he was a rabid fan. Tsutumi was also well known as the head of the Japan Olympic Committee-the committee that DID NOT distribute any special perks of favors to get the winter Olympics to Nagano in 2000.
Yeah right.
And they can prove it, because they shredded all the documents related to expenses once the Olympics were over and paid for.
You decide.